Starting a thread for the upcoming season of "Dancing with the Stars". It's being advertised (in today's Parade magazine) as being in HD (ABCHD logo on full page ad). The mayhem starts this Tuesday! Looking forward to the skimpy costumes!!

Not in HD in West Palm Beach, FL. Someone forgot to throw the HD switch, and of course no one at the station is aware of the problem. Yay. Fortunately, the screenshots here pretty much satisfied my curiosity.

Watching this show for the first time, and IMO, this show has nothing on "So You Think You Can Dance" on Fox. Where is the emotion?

Or are these the blooper episodes like the first episodes of AI or SYTYCD?

There are no bloopers here except for the stuff that happens during the rehearsal/practice sessions.

We don't have hundreds or thousands competing for a few coveted spots. It's just these 11 couples, who've had just 6 weeks to practice. Each week, one couple will be eliminated.

Some will have only that one moment of glory or infamy (see Kenny Mayne from last year's competition); others will take a while to reach their level of incompetence (called the Peter Principle, if you didn't know); and still others will surprise us with their abilities (maybe Jerry Springer is a better dancer than he leads us to believe!).

Don't take this as seriously as SYTYCD, where the competition is a lot more fierce, and prestige and a lot of money await. This is more for pride than anything else!

I wasn't intersted in this show but the wife kept telling me how surprised she was to see Emmitt Smith dance so well. Is there any truth to that? I figured after seeing Jerry Rice last time, any NFL player would look a good dancer to her. I could be wrong.

I wasn't intersted in this show but the wife kept telling me how surprised she was to see Emmitt Smith dance so well. Is there any truth to that? I figured after seeing Jerry Rice last time, any NFL player would look a good dancer to her. I could be wrong.

Well everyone has their opinion (the judges certainly loved him) but I couldn't understand where they were coming from. He certainly has a nice musicality and feel on the dance floor but a cha-cha it wasn't, not even remotely. OTOH, they seem to be getting further and further away from the stricter styles and closer and closer to show dancing and cabaret, if that. It is entertainment, after all, and ABC will do everything they think is necessary to keep the ratings up, and I'm sure they "discuss" things with the "judges" beforehand.

I wasn't intersted in this show but the wife kept telling me how surprised she was to see Emmitt Smith dance so well. Is there any truth to that? I figured after seeing Jerry Rice last time, any NFL player would look a good dancer to her. I could be wrong.

They described him as a dancing teddy bear, and that pretty well covers it. He moved really well for such a big man, and he flowed well, not stiff at all. Much better than Rice was. It will be interesting to see how well he can do some other dances.

Well, Rice did get much better after a few weeks and this group had the benefit of a 6 weeks head start. And, IIRC, Rice was much better when dancing smooth styles like the Foxtrot and Quickstep and was too stiff on the latin dances.

I think Emmitt will be the opposite; better at the latins and not good at all on the smooth styles. The thing that bothered me about Emmitt was that he seemed to off the beat a lot (esp. with his hand movements).

BTW, the audio on the digital broadcast really bad last night. Did anyone else have problems?

Well, Rice did get much better after a few weeks and this group had the benefit of a 6 weeks head start. And, IIRC, Rice was much better when dancing smooth styles like the Foxtrot and Quickstep and was too stiff on the latin dances.

Saying Jerry Rice "did much better" after a few weeks of practice is faint praise indeed. He was awful at the beginning, and only slightly less awful by the end. The man has absolutely no sense of rhythm or grace, and that's something that unfortunately can't be taught. His second place finish was a travesty, and an insult to the incandescent Stacy Keebler, who placed third, behind Rice (!), but deserved to win (no insult to Drew Lachey, but she was just better at all facets of the competition - and so gorgeous). And Jerry's petulant attitude at the judges' proper criticism of his shortcomings was cringeworthy. Rice's finish was based solely on popularity, not performance, but such is the drawback of audience-vote reality shows like this. Emmitt at least has some semblance of rhythm; grace may be a tougher challenge for him.

Was the DD5.1 mix on 9/13 bad for anyone else? Here, the dialog was coming through both center and L/R with a slight delay between them so there was an echo. The first night was fine. Station is KNXV-DT Phoenix.

Well I did see some footages with the wife last night, Smith indeed danced better than Rice, but I must disagree with the judges' enthusiasm. He showed good rhythm and a few well coached moves but I doubt you can teach him anything too complex. But then for a football player he was incredible.

Was the DD5.1 mix on 9/13 bad for anyone else? Here, the dialog was coming through both center and L/R with a slight delay between them so there was an echo. The first night was fine. Station is KNXV-DT Phoenix.

I checked the demuxed AC3 and the entire thing was bad. I don't actually watch the show, but it was on in between the local debut of Wheel in HD and the ABC fall previews and I decided to hold on to it when I noticed the echoing. I don't have Soundforge or any of those nice toys to spit out a pretty 6 channel graph, but I can say that the dialog was still present after unplugging the center channel, and also present after unplugging both L and R and leaving C plugged in. The chief engineer at KNXV says they pass the audio through with no additional processing so it isn't an issue on their side.

... And Jerry's petulant attitude at the judges' proper criticism of his shortcomings was cringeworthy. Rice's finish was based solely on popularity, not performance, but such is the drawback of audience-vote reality shows like this. ....

Yeah, Rice's attitude was seriously annoying.

And it looks like Milla Ford is the one that is going to get the short-end of the popularity stick this season and get kicked out before Jerry Springer.

The overall level of competition seems like it might be a lot higher this season. There's Joey and Mario for the guys and Milla, Monique, Vivica and possible even Shanna if she came improve for the women.

The BBC version of Dancing with the Stars is, for the first time, coming from an HD capable studio when it debuts next week. The largest BBC studio in London was upgraded from SD 16:9 to HD 16:9 over the summer I believe - but the shows from it so far (mainly "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" - a reality show to find the lead singer for Andrew Lloyd Webber's new West End production of The Sound of Music!) have only been broadcast on the BBC SD outlet, not on the HD trial service.

Be interesting to see if Strictly Come Dancing is HD - somehow I doubt it will be...

(The screengrabs confirm that the studio layout, lighting and design are VERY similar to the original BBC production - though the "backstage" area looks a bit bigger in the US!)

I have been seeing the echo and cracks here and there. Audio output is not up to the quality I expect nor am I feeling the true 5.1 that I thought might be used considering the live band and complex audience arrangement, but the picture has been very nice (OTA).